Art lifts my soul everyday - Laois suckler farmer

‘When I went back to study art, it was like I became a new person.” These are the words of farmer and visual artist Mary Slevin on rediscovering her creative spark at the age of 50.

“For the years I was working, rearing kids and looking after the farm, I kind of lost myself. It brought me back to my youth. I felt young again,” she says from her studio, a converted shed on the family farm at Mount Henry, Portarlington in Co Laois.

“There’s a great lift to it. Art lifts your soul. Life was tough there for a few years — we had a few bereavements and sicknesses — and art was what got me through it and kept me sane. When things were going belly up around me, I could go into my studio and paint a picture and go into another world. It just calms me. That’s what it [art] does for me,” she tells Irish Country Living.

For Mary, once she goes out the door, the inspiration is all around her. “I’d be very influenced by what is going on on the farm, the changing seasons and the cattle,” she says, joking that her painting of livestock walking up the road came to her as she was helping her husband Christy.

“We were moving cattle, and I was pulling my phone out [to take a photo of the scene to paint later], and Christy was scowling at me. ‘He says we’re moving cattle. It’s not photos you want here,’” Mary says, laughing.

“That’s what would catch you. Those little moments,” she adds. Her preferred medium is oils and acrylics, but she also works in mixed media by introducing stitch.

Farm studio

While the Kilkenny native had always enjoyed art, there wasn’t a career in it in the 1980s, so she parked that side of her as work and family life on the farm took over. After being made redundant from her office job during the recession, Mary decided to return to the creative endeavours she had enjoyed in her youth.

“I said, ‘Right, I’m going to do something I want to do now’,” she recalls, explaining that she enrolled in several art courses in nearby Abbeyleix FEB. “I was 50 when I went back [to study art]. It was the best decision I ever made.”

She continued to develop her artistic technique, skill and styles through master development courses and lots of research.

Fortunate to have space, Mary later converted a stone shed into a studio close to their farmhouse, which is over 200 years old. She has been farming with Christy for the last 35 years in their suckler cow and sheep enterprise. The couple were recently joined by their daughter Joanne, the fourth generation to farm in Mount Henry. She is also creative and is part of the Crafty Dreams Studio group spinning and carding wool in Portarlington.

“The farm enhances what I do [with art]. I work a lot with people with special needs,” Mary explains, saying that this happened very much by accident when a lady and her carer came to the studio for a workshop. Through word of mouth this spread to many others, and she now runs several workshops a week.

“I would have about 20 clients coming to me. Some would come in a group, and others come individually. Some are older, and then a lot of the younger clients are people with autism,” adds Mary, who is now in her 60s. “I get great satisfaction out of it.

I think it’s a fantastic cause, and it is a great honour to be able to give something. I really enjoy it. I make sure I sign up every year

“It’s very quiet here. Some of the children with special needs love the animals, the chickens and the hens and the lambs jumping around. If they show an interest, we’ll feed a lamb or pet an animal too.”

Seeing the joy that creating something that her clients can bring home also inspires Mary and has helped develop her art skills even further. She has also worked with children as part of the Bringing Live Arts to Students and Teachers Programme or BLAST.

Three of Mary’s pieces are included in the incognito charity art sale next week in aid of the Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation. The fundraiser is often described as Ireland’s great art masquerade, where the artists’ identity is kept top secret until after the sale closes.

Previous contributors include Bruce Springsteen, Bono, The Edge, Ronnie Wood, Bob Geldof, Tracey Emin, Mick O’Dea, Vincent Devine, Peter Curling and Philip Treacy.

“I think it’s a fantastic cause, and it is a great honour to be able to give something. I really enjoy it. I make sure I sign up every year,” she says ahead of the sale, half of which will be sold in the gallery in Charlemont Square, Dublin on 11 and 12 April, and the other half online on 16 April.

“You’re just giving a small bit of your talent, and there is a great feel-good factor from it.”

Prior to that, Mary has the small matter of a new exhibition to get ready for in BloomHQ in Mountrath on Thursday, 4 April at 7pm.

“The theme is home because it is what’s all around me,” says the artist. “I get a lot of inspiration from the trees – between that and the cattle – and the flowers.”

See incognito.ie